Groundwater Exploration and Pollution Assessment of Aquifer Southwest of River Wouri, Douala

Abstract

Summary Bonaberi located Southwest of the Wouri Estuary is a low land area, with a high population density, that have drastically increase in recent years due to the socio-political crise observed in Cameroon. Groundwater exploitation has become the main source of water for the community and are used both for agricultural and domestic uses (Takem, et al., 2015). The increase in population led to an increase in demand and exploitation of water resources that may have an adverse effect to the aquifer. The main aim of this work was to characterize and assess the pollution in the aquifer using both geophysical and geochemical technics. the geochemistry reveals that 12 wells out of 15 were salinized and this may be attributed to the poor practices employed by the local community to dis-infect their wells. the geophysics reveal that the shallow aquifers are salinized due to the present of low resistivity anomalies observed while the deep aquifers are not. Thus, the source of pollution is of anthropogenic origin. The electro-seismic tomography revealed that shallow and deep aquifers were observed with varying permeability, depth and thickness. The electro-seismic method is adequate for aquifer characterization and ground water exploration in sedimentary basins.